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The novel, not the movie, A Simple Plan is an excellent debut novel by Scott Smith. I read his later book, The Ruins, and it paled in comparison to this one. A Simple Plan is ambitious in its plot making inspired by what I can only compare to Shakespeare's Macbeth. And with that being said, I can easily see how some folks might see this book suffering from a certain moral didacticism which is shallow and unwieldy. Scott Smith is not Shakespeare and I don't think he pretends to be. His writing is aggressively active using simple sentences, compound complex ones, and never fails to use ones with too much punctuation. 

He doesn't try the pretenses of writing you see in books. For example, Gone Girl is a book I've never been able to finish. It has the unnecessary details that scream look at me I'm writing and I'm trying to be great. Just write, and tell your story. It's one of the things I appreciate from Smith. Again, he's not Shakespeare, nor does he pretend to be. 

 If I hadn't read his book, The Ruins before this I wouldn't understand his honesty. He creates characters operate from a moral didacticism just like Macbeth, except Smith doesn't drag this out, probably because today's audience wouldn't read it. Further, these are characters we can relate to from the time we live in and the situation is one we can all see: What would we do if we found four million in cash? verses What would you do to be king? How many people would you kill to keep your money? 

The protagonist, in this story starts out with a simple plan: keep the money and then everything spirals out of control from there, his choices and those of the two men in the agreement with him do as well. Smith pounds you with plot twist keeping you guessing until the surprising end. He does a great job of developing his characters to the extend to gain my sympathy, and then makes me hate them. This is a skill to twist a reader's feelings to such an extreme. One particular character found his way into my heart, because he was the only one who dreamed small, loved and trusted despite the betrayal. I'll reveal one of the plot twists should I say more, so I'll stop here. Please read this book, it was published years ago, but it still wakes up the bad in us all makes us question our own moral dilemmas and definitely makes me trade in my coffee for veggie juice.

5 Stars for Wayward Pines 

The Wayward Pines Trilogy Book 1

Blake Crouch

Summary:

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels…off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

Read Books 2 and 3 in the Trilogy, WAYWARD and THE LAST TOWN,

The international runaway bestseller is now a Major Television Event from executive producer M. Night Shyamalan, starring Matt Dillon and premiering on FOX May 14th.

Review:

Pines is a mystery E.M. Forster would appreciate. It begins with Ethan Burke’s existence in a strange town where he questions his sanity, because no one seems to know him. It ends by not just addressing Ethan, but civilization as we think we know it. The strangeness dragging the reader from beginning to end is much like the Twin Peaks series, and Pines will become a series beginning May fourteenth. After reading the first book in the Wayward Pines series; the TV series will not be disappointing.

First, Ethan Burke, the main character,  is well-drawn often pulling from his bloody tortured past making him stronger to fight against those trying to make him feel insane. He’s also a man who loves his wife and son, but is terribly flawed in being there for them. This plays an ace at the end when he makes his choice about Wayward Pines. The second plus to this book is the ability of the author to the one key question I had: What is Wayward Pines? Where is Wayward Pines? Is it really a town, or a place in Ethan Burke’s mind? If it is a town, are the people living in it human or something else?

The question about Wayward Pines was answered, but that answer followed more questions like the brutality and violence shown from the townspeople, especially when they were chosen for the better good. For me this was a good question to lead into the second book leading me back to thinking Wayward Pines is an evil place where only bad things grow. Obviously, Ethan Burke was not getting the entire truth at the end of book one.

As far as the questions surrounding the agents missing and the lack of concern about this didn’t bother me, because I think the secret service could have been overwhelmed with the greater human race, and I’ll stop there, else I’ll give too much of the plot away. My other theory is that the agents missing were assumed dead.

If you’re inclined to a psychological mystery to psych you out - Pines is your book. Don’t miss it!

Pines can be found at Amazon.com.

5 Stars for The Ruins by Scott Smith

This may have been one of the best suspense horror books I've ever read, and this is after reading folks like Laymon, Ketchum, Keene, Hill, and King. Horror. Good horror should be suspenseful! The suspense never stops in this book. It's on every page. The character development while not as enriching as say, Dolores Claiborne, was still a big thumbs up, because these characters fit this book like a glove. Yes, they are outlines of people we know, or may be, this is the point, so that some part of us is them, or at least knows them on a very personal level.

Smith even makes fun of this fact. At one point in the book the characters make fun of each other stating that soon they would be out of their predicament and onward to the red carpet of movie making, one of them being the boy-scout, one being the slut, one being the good girl, the jock, the outcast, and then the poor guy who always seems to die first.

Their reactions to their nightmare situation are more than believable, and each character reacts exactly as they have been drawn by Smith. This author knows what he's doing to pull you in, and keep you there, and while I love a good King book, I always have to wait a while for this kind of suspense. You don't have to wait with Scott Smith. I only wish he had more out there to read.

Four Stars for Heather Herrman's Consumption

Consumption is a great twist on the apocalyptic zombie genre, because it adds a philosophical aspect to ‘consuming’ folks. These ‘Walkers’ not only eat flesh, but the soul of a human being. This carnage of flesh eating monsters is contained within the small town, Cavus. If this apocalypse is contained within its Plato cave, then the world will be saved a soul, or two.

This plot line of saving, introduces a number of would-be heroes, and heroines. The first two are Erma and John, a couple on the road to mending their marriage. The oppositional dynamics of loss and need drew me to these two characters; I found myself rooting for them, and not just Cavus. For example, they both wanted a family, but one of them was terribly afraid to start one, and that fear was swallowing them both. I would have liked to have seen more of Erma and John, but as mentioned there were too many other characters sketched in, but not truly developed as well as the first two, Erma, and John.

There was Star, a typical, troubled teen and her potential boyfriend, Javier. Neither of these characters moved past surface feelings of anger and loss. I didn’t find myself rooting as hard for them as Erma and John, despite the fact that Star and Javier had tremendous loss in the book. Other characters included, Riley, your stereotypical sheriff with baggage, his daughter, Izzy and his crazy Aunt Bunny. The last two good folks introduced was Jessi and Pill, a married couple in direct contrast to Erma and John. I wish I’d seen more of them, and sooner.

The bad guy, Grady was so evil you couldn’t bleach him good. There was no dual nature to Grady. He was plain bad, and not very interesting; however, he served his purpose making Consumption follow-through to a pleasing, if not bloody favored ending. I would recommend this book to adults who like a fast read with writing similar to that of Joe Hill, but horror closer to Stephen King’s ideal where evil is evil and there’s no in-between. 

4 Stars for Candice Fox's Hades

Review: 

Candice Fox’s Hades is an interesting twist in Crime Fiction, one that turns good cop to bad leaving the reader surprisingly sympathetic to evil. It reminds me of Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The Dexter book hooked me in the first paragraph, first because of the genius way the serial killer Dexter is first implanted in the reader’s mind, second the writing is fantastic.

         “And the Need was very strong now, careful cold coiled creeping crackly cocked and ready…it made me wait and watch.

I had been waiting for the priest for five weeks now.”

The use of alliteration is better than Peter Piper, no pause in the need – to kill. Right away, you know Dexter will kill himself a priest. But, why? And better, why does he have this need? For anyone whose watched Dexter, you’ll know there’s a great reason for that.

Now, back to Fox’s Hades, she proposed that same kind of mystery in her story; however, I don’t think it was as fleshed out as it could have been. The reason was there, and it was good, but not great as in the Dexter book. There the reason exploded in all its gory detail, and in it Dexter was our hero, odd but true. I didn’t come out of Hades finding a hero, just a lot of lost souls. I'm a girl that likes a hero, someone to root for.

         First, the character of Hades felt like a deep, dark shadow with no real face, and I thought he had the most potential to be interesting. Fox’s set-up of him was interesting, but I would have liked to see more into what made him tick, not just a glimpse of his childhood but a deep probing. I never really understood his need to help young Eden and Eric other than he didn’t kill innocents. Eric came across as just a stereotypical bully, sadistically psycho, sure, but nothing too mind blowing. Eden was interesting, but like Hades I wish I could have seen more, maybe even before of who she was before meeting Hades. Overall, the three of these characters competed with a fourth character, Frank. Frank was the primary perspective the story was told in. Frank was a typical cop with a history of being unreliable and selfish. His character made an unusual turn towards heroic at one point, where I started to like him a little, then he did something at the very end of the story that simply said there was no changing this guy. He was always going to pursue his own interest which meant chasing down Eric and Eden’s secrets rather than protect those that needed protecting. Frank started selfish and ended that way for me.  I wish someone else had told me the story, maybe Hades.

         In the end, I will say the double plot worked. The serial killer Frank chased never felt like it was competing with his need to find out more about Eden and Eric. The ending was predictable, but for a good vengeance story, and serial killer story this is what I expected. Hades was a fast read, with a neat ‘Desterish’ premise that I would recommend. It’s worth your time if your into a good crime story, with a serial killer, and some messed-up cops looking for vengeance, Hades is your cup of Joe, dark roast no vanilla, thata be your hero.

5+ Stars for The Girl Next Door - Jack Ketchum

Stephen King calls Jack Ketchum is one of the best in the business and after reading The Girl Next Door and Offspring, I'm inclined to believe it. Especially, The Girl Next Door, a book based a real life terror.  Even before I got to the author's notes at the back, I knew this story, read about it, and was disgusted by it, hated the woman that orchestrated the torture of the young fourteen-year-old girl utilizing her own sons and other neighborhood children. The true story was set back in the 1960's and pretty much happened the way Ketchum depicted it.

Summary:

The Girl Next Door is a dark and twisted story told through the eyes of a preteen boy. Set in the 1950s, the book mixes true life experiences from author Jack Ketchum with a fictionalized account of one of America's grizzliest true crime stories. With an engaging story and believable characters, this is a book that no one will want to put down.

The Girl Next Door follows a young man named David and the relationship he shares with a teenage girl named Meg. Meg lives next door with her younger sister and an older woman, Ruth, who also has three sons. Ruth is the type of woman whom everyone considers part of the gang and teenagers love hanging out with because she gives them alcohol and lets them run loose. Once David discovers the dark side of Ruth and the horrendous things she does to Meg, he must make a decision to stand up to Ruth or stick with the crowd.

Made into a hit horror film, The Girl Next Door is a harrowing look at what happens behind closed doors. Ketchum writes an unflinching portrait of small-town America, showing that what people do in public does not necessarily represent the way they act in private. From the moment David meets Meg to the last page of the novel, you will find yourself wrapped up in David's story and hoping he does the right thing.

The Girl Next Door is an introspective story that will have you taking a second look at your neighbors and questioning what you would do in the same situation.

Review:

This story is so horrific you can't believe it's based on a true story, but it is. I read this book in one day, rooting for David to do the right thing, and rooting for Meg and Susan to find safety. Ketchum's approach to this story work to dig at your heart, your inner most fears. It is done in a very poetic way. The story is told by twelve-year-old David, so you don't see the complete horror of everything, but you see enough, and you see it escalate in the aunt, how she slowly begins to punish the girls, from taking away food, water, and then beating them. It gets much worse when Meg goes to the basement and is locked away. Yet, you see the strength of Meg and her endurance, and need to protect her little sister no matter what happens to her. You see her goodness, and pain inside and out. You empathize with them.

But you sympathize with David, understand the time he lives in and how he rationalizes allowing this monster behavior out of his neighbors. In the end, you can't hate him, because David has been tortured too, felt pain of standing by and letting it all happen. 

Now as for the boys committing the atrocities, I think of them as right out of Lord of the Flies, boys free to give into their emerging man, worse their 'normal' emerging sadistic tendencies such as boiling ants, or perhaps drowning the neighborhood cat - except in their case this was Meg, a real live girl treated like an animal. It broke my heart.

Overall, the aunt was the worse, and who I hated the most. She was clinically crazy, slowly eaten away by her own bitterness at being left by the father of her three boys. She felt strapped down, imprisoned and rationalized she was doing some good by Meg and Susan so that they didn't one day suffer her fate, but the truth was I believed her to be jealous of Meg and the goodness and light this young girl's future held. She was everything the aunt wished she still had, youth, talent, and attractiveness. The aunt crushed all of it, because it was not hers. I hated her for it. A young girl should be nurtured, and guided into womanhood without feeling ugly about growing into it. 

Again, I hated her, still do. Ketchum does a great job of painting her, an excellent job of stacking the plot elements to the top until you reach the final climatic ending that does. not. disappoint. The Girl Next Door is woven well, characterization, plot, it has it all, but sadly it will break your heart. I cried, and I think for the next month I'm going to have to unknot my stomach and read something happy.

Five Stars for Shady Cross James Hankins

A crime thriller

Summary

In one hand, small-time crook Stokes holds a backpack stuffed with someone else’s money - three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of it.

In the other hand, Stokes has a cell phone, which he found with the money. On the line, a little girl he doesn’t know asks, “Daddy? Are you coming to get me? They say if you give them money they’ll let you take me home.”

From bestselling author James Hankins comes a wrenching story of an unscrupulous man torn between his survival instincts and the plight of a true innocent. Faced with the choice, Stokes discovers his conscience might not be as corroded as he thought.

Review

This is the third book I’ve read by James Hankins and it is the best one. Obviously, this writer gets better the more he writes. I prefer a book that’s character driven, and Shady Cross is entirely dictated by the actions of the main character, Stokes, a guy down on his luck and a complete loser. Stokes is a guy you don’t expect to be heroic saving a little girl from some ruthless kidnappers willing to do anything to get their money - even hurting the girl in bits and pieces.

Shady Cross is a terrific example of how a great story can be developed from well-done characterization. Stoke’s character peeled away like an onion, revealing him first as the loser he’d become, then the motives that made him that way, and finally the choices he was trying to make to change. Every other character in the book developed through their relationship to Stokes, highlighting his actions past and present.

The biggest characteristic I liked about Stokes was deciding quickly to save/or not save the girl. Don’t get me wrong, the inner struggle to do the complete opposite was a constant conflict. In Techniques of the Selling Writer, quick decision making by the main character is a must…

“The issue is the moment of commitment. True suspense only comes when you establish the story question. And the story question moves into focus only when your character, desiring, looks danger full in the face and then takes up the challenge that the situation offers. Implicitly or explicitly, he must say, ‘I’ll fight’, before your story can begin.”

Shady Cross began right away and kept up an intriguing fast pace all the way till the end. I read it in three days. This book is loaded with suspense, conflict, and tension. Suspense on whether or not the girl would be saved kept me reading, the constant conflict inner and outer with Stokes kept me reading, and finally the tension beneath the suspense layer kept me turning pages.  The final ending felt perfect to the events leading up to it. Although, the ending is not necessarily the happiest ñ it works splendidly. A bold move from Mr. Hankins. I highly recommend Shady Cross to mature readers looking for a good fast pace thriller with an unlikely hero.

Shady Cross comes out February 24th, but can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.

You can find out more about Shady Cross at http://jameshankinsbooks.com/